The Lost Boys

by Faye Kellerman

  “Not specifically, no,” Evans said. “I know when a locker is seized, the lock is broken and an inventory is taken. I think they try to contact the owner.”

  “How? By phone or mail or …”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about the entry and exit logbooks? How far do they go back?”

  “Not a clue.” Evans brightened. “Stella would know. She’s been here forever. Hold on.” He pushed a button on a landline phone and waited. “She isn’t answering. I can’t leave my desk. I have to make sure everyone who enters goes through procedure.”

  “Why don’t you just point us in the direction of Stella’s office?”

  “I would except I would incur Stella’s wrath. She hates to be disturbed.”

  “We’re seasoned cops, Boyd,” Decker said. “We’re excellent at handling wrath.”

  AS IT TURNED out, Stella was in a shooting booth, practicing with a Glock 22, a bigger, more versatile version of the 19 that Decker carried, as it could shoot 9 mm as well as S&W .40 ammo. Since there weren’t a lot of calls for drawn weapons in Greenbury—violent crime was virtually nonexistent—he packed the 19. It was easily concealed and made for less intimidation when he was in the field.

  The range had six indoor lanes separated by partitions and the usual red lines running down the lane to denote the specific firing area. Stella had on headphones, and her stance was that of a pro. She was tall and had an Olive Oyl frame with stick arms and bony hands that belied a deadly aim. She wore a gray T-shirt over jeans and ankle boots on her feet. When she was finished with target practice—five rounds on or near the bull’s-eye—she holstered the firearm and pressed the button to examine her handiwork.

  In her own glass box and looking over the lanes, a manager provided shooters with headphones and a handout with a long list of dos and don’ts while in the range. She was in her mid-forties with a weathered face, and she kept a sharp visual on all six shooters. In front of her was a console with buttons for verbally communicating with the shooters in the booths. While Stella was looking over her target, the manager depressed a button. She said, “Stella, you have visitors.”

  “In a minute” was the response.

  The manager said, “You can wait for her in the gun-locker room. We don’t allow people to congregate out here. It’s through that door on the left.”

  The man in charge of the gun-locker room also sat behind a glass partition.

  No one was taking any chances.

  He appeared to be in his fifties, with a broad chest and sleeve tattoos on both arms. He had long hair streaked gray, wore a black sleeveless shirt with a red, sequined Harley logo to match the red MAGA cap.

  Decker went over to him. “Excuse me.” The man lifted his face. “Boyd told us that we can pick up our guns here.”

  “Tickets.” When presented with the stubs, the man said, “Slide them under the glass.”

  Decker cooperated. A moment later, a small glass door on the side of the partition opened and out came the metal boxes. “Thank you.”

  “Cops?”

  “We are.”

  “How about arresting those cretins out there?”

  “They’re allowed to be there.”

  “They’re allowed to protest. Not to hassle me every time I come in and out.”

  Decker smiled. “Somehow I think you can take care of yourself.”

  The man smiled back. “Plead the Fifth on that one.”

  “I like your shirt,” McAdams said. “It sparkles.”

  “Represents my feminine side.” When he smiled, he bared teeth—a complete set but yellow. “Got all this shit at Sturgis.”

  “My wife and I made it as far as Keystone on our way to see Rushmore,” Decker said. “But it was during Sturgis. There were women who could have whopped my ass, and I’m not a small man.”

  “Don’t surprise me. We’re the true outlaws. Not those punkasses out there—about as tough as a noodle.”

  At that moment Stella walked in. “You two wanted to see me? You look like cops.”

  “We are cops.”

  “Greenbury PD or the colleges?”

  “Greenbury.” McAdams pulled out his badge.

  “Real police. As much as this place has real police. Mostly just a bunch of young nothing officers and old men for detectives.” She winked at Decker. “No offense.”

  “None taken,” Decker said.

  “He worked Homicide in L.A. for over four decades,” McAdams said. “Does that qualify as real police?”

  Stella turned her steely blue eyes back on Decker’s face. “What division?”

  “I wound up a lieutenant running the detective squad. But here I’m just an old man looking for information. With that in mind, we’re wondering if you’ve kept old logbooks of people who came in and out of the range.”

  “How old?”

  “Ten years back.”

  “We have old logbooks. You looking for someone specific?”

  “Max Velasquez,” Decker said. “He’s on your computerized list of locker renters.”

  “If he rented a locker, he must have come in and out of the range,” Stella said.

  “Not necessarily,” Decker said. “He could have rented the locker for someone else.”

  Stella wrote down the name. “Anything else?”

  “Do you keep records of the contents of lockers?”

  “Only if the person who rented it was delinquent in payment. And I take it the information you want is also from ten years ago?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re looking for a gun?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Okay, Mr. Cagey Lieutenant, let’s deal with the gun first,” Stella said. “If payment is delinquent, we first try to contact the owner. Even after we empty a locker, if it has a firearm, we still try to contact the owner. If there’s no owner, we turn in the firearms to the authorities.”

  “Which authorities?” McAdams asked. “Greenbury or the colleges?”

  “Greenbury. If the locker you are seeking had a weapon, go search your own backyard.”

  “We will do that,” McAdams said. “But if you have any information about what was in the locker, that would help.”

  “I’ll see if we have any contents lists. If we did, they’d be in my office. You two have guns?”

  Decker said, “We just retrieved them.”

  “Give them back to Casey. We don’t allow guns anywhere except on the range and in the gun-locker room.”

  “How do we get from the gun-locker room to the parking lot without going through the front door?” McAdams asked.

  “It’s called a back door.” She pointed to a door cut in the wall of the gun-locker room. “Pretty ironic that a gun range has to protect itself against crazies with guns.”

  THE WINDOWLESS OFFICE had four walls of metal file cabinets. The interior was a desk, a desk chair, and two folding chairs. On top of one of the cabinets was a coffeepot, a bag of coffee, and a pile of artificial sweetener packets. Two mugs sat side by side: one was a red emblazoned with the gold MAGA logo; the other said DEPLORABLE AND PROUD OF IT. There was also a water machine sandwiched between two cabinets. Stella started opening and closing drawers.

  “Nope.” Slam. “Nope.” Slam. “Nope.” Slam. A pause. “Here we go. Got the year. What month?”

  “September and October.”

  “And the name is Max Velasquez?”

  “Yes.”

  She stopped looking and turned abruptly. “Does this have to do with the bones you found in the woods?”

  “Yes,” Decker said.

  “They’re saying the bones belong to one of the Duxbury students who disappeared around ten years ago.”

  “Zeke Anderson,” Decker said.

  Stella sat down and looked at the wall. “So that’s why you want to go ten years back.”

  “Yes.”

  “Their faces were in the local papers for months afterward,” Stella said. “Velasquez was one of th
e names, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Decker pulled out a picture from his wallet. “This is Maxwell Velasquez.”

  “Don’t recognize him as a user,” Stella said. “And I’m good with faces. Matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that one of them did some target practice here. He was Black.”

  “Bennett McCrae,” McAdams said.

  When she shrugged, out came the picture from Decker’s wallet. “Him?”

  “That’s the one,” Stella said. “Always wearing an Obama cap. Occasionally we’d talk politics.”

  “Different sides of the aisle?” McAdams remarked.

  “What do you think? No, I wasn’t a fan, but I told him I could understand why he was a fan. We don’t get a ton of Black kids who like to shoot, but he sure did. He came to the range pretty regularly.”

  “And not this one?” Decker showed her the picture of Velasquez again.

  “Nope. If he came, it wasn’t on my watch.”

  “When is your watch?” McAdams asked.

  “From opening till closing.”

  McAdams smiled. “We used our badge numbers as IDs to sign in. What do you usually ask for? Driver’s licenses?”

  “That or school IDs.”

  “Does the school ID have a photograph?”

  “Yes.”

  Decker said, “Probably easier to doctor a school ID than a driver’s license.”

  Stella said, “You think this Bennett guy was using Velasquez’s school ID.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Why bother? We don’t check who rents the locker. If the person has a key, that’s enough.”

  Decker thought a moment. “Could be he didn’t want to use his real name in case the gun was used in something illegal. Or maybe he didn’t want anyone to find out he liked guns.”

  Stella made a face. “None of that makes a lot of sense.”

  “Just ideas,” Decker said. “Never said they were good ones.”

  Stella smiled. She put down the file. “Give me a little time, and I’ll go through everything around those dates, Detective. It’s better than me looking piecemeal.”

  “How long do you think it will take you?”

  “Don’t know. Give me a phone number and I’ll call you back.”

  “Are you sure?” Decker asked. “We can wait.”

  “Nah, I’ll call you. Be careful making your way back through the throng.”

  “They don’t bother me.”

  “They don’t bother me, either,” Stella said. “Sometimes, when I’m in a benevolent mood, I even bring them water on a hot day. They don’t drink it.” A smile. “They probably think it’s poisoned.”

  “It’s still nice of you.”

  “No biggie.” A pause. “I once batted for the other side. Then my brother—who was twenty at the time—was murdered over his sneakers. The bastards who did it were juveniles. They were out after serving six months.” Her face turned rabid. “I can’t forget and I don’t forgive. I know that’s not the Christian way. But it’s my right to hate. And hate I shall.”

  CHAPTER 20

  AS SOON AS they walked into the station, Decker’s desk phone jangled. It was Kevin Butterfield, who was still in the field, directing the search in the mountains for additional remains. Reception was spotty at best. It took a few moments before the parties could hear each other.

  “When did you get back?” he asked Decker.

  “Last night. Kev, I’m putting you on speakerphone so Harvard can hear.”

  “Hey, kid.”

  “Hey, Kev.”

  “How did it go with the parents?”

  McAdams said, “They’re grieving.”

  “Learn anything?” Butterfield asked.

  “Maxwell Velasquez was obsessed with Bennett McCrae.”

  “As in sexually?”

  “Maybe, but however Max felt, it was one-way. McCrae took advantage of Velasquez. Max gave him money without any expectation of being paid back.”

  Decker said, “We were at the school’s gun range this morning. Max Velasquez was on the range’s locker rental list ten years ago, but the woman in charge who has been there forever doesn’t recall ever seeing Max’s face. However, she remembered a young Black man using Max’s ID. I showed her Bennett McCrae’s photo, and the rest is history.”

  “It matches up with what Harriet McCrae remembers,” McAdams said. “Bennett used to shoot at the school range, although she claims she never saw him with a gun.”

  Butterfield said, “We still haven’t found any signs of a firearm near the remains.”

  McAdams said, “The range empties gun lockers that are delinquent for payment after three months. If there’s a firearm inside and they can’t find the owner, they hand it over to Greenbury PD. We’re waiting to hear back to see if the range has any written records of handing the gun over to Greenbury.”

  “If the gun was turned in that long ago, it was probably destroyed.”

  “No doubt,” McAdams said. “What’s up with you, Kev?”

  “We got a DNA profile from the blood at Elsie Schulung’s house. It’s not hers, it’s not Kathrine Taylor’s, but it is female.”

  “That narrows it down by fifty percent.”

  “It gets more interesting. I just got off the phone with Jake Quay from Baniff PD. It seems that Elsie Schulung had a girlfriend named Pauline Corbett. The police were at Pauline’s apartment. No answer at the door, so the management let them in. The place wasn’t emptied, but it was bare bones. Baniff canvassed the neighborhood, and Pauline hasn’t been seen in a while. She doesn’t seem to have a job. Neither does she have a criminal record. Their forensics team took several things from her place that should yield DNA.”

  “What specifically?” Decker asked.

  “A toothbrush and a nail file … maybe a hairbrush. They’re going into the lab tomorrow for testing.”

  Decker thought a moment. “Kev, how much blood was found in the kitchen?”

  “You tell me. You were there.”

  “It was more than a nosebleed, that’s for sure. Quay was going to pull up the tile to see if even more blood seeped through. I’m wondering if it was enough for exsanguination of a human body?”

  “Quay didn’t say.”

  “I’ll give him a call,” Decker said. “Does Pauline have a car?”

  “She does and it’s gone. We have a BOLO on it.” Butterfield gave him the make and model.

  “Great.” Decker’s cell buzzed. “I need to take this. It’s the lady from the gun range.”

  “Sure. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Decker hung up the landline and depressed the cell’s green button. “Hi, Stella.”

  “Hello, Detective,” she said. “There was a gun—an S&W M&P—registered to Max Velasquez at the time he rented the locker. He was required to register it. But when the locker was closed out—in May of 2010—there was no record of a gun being inside the locker.”

  “Okay,” Decker said. “Then whoever had access to the locker could have taken the gun.”

  “Absolutely,” Stella concurred. “You know, there is also a small chance that we messed up and the gun was sent to Greenbury and we just didn’t note it. You should check your own records.”

  “We will.”

  “One more thing,” Stella said. “I was going through the gun-locker registrations. Zeke Anderson also rented a locker, but he closed it out about eight months before he went missing. I went back and looked at our sign-in sheets. According to the logs, he came here about a dozen times in the year preceding the students’ disappearances. I don’t know if it’s significant, but there it is.”

  Decker was writing as fast as he could. “Could you give me the dates?”

  “I’d have to go look them up again.” Stella paused.

  “Do you remember if he came into the range with anyone?”

  “Show me a photograph and I can tell you yes or no. My memory isn’t that good. I can look up his name in the sign-in sheets and see if there’s anoth
er name that was frequently next to his.”

  “That would be great, Stella. Thanks.” After she hung up, Decker turned to McAdams. “Zeke Anderson also rented a gun locker. He used to shoot at the range.”

  “I thought his parents said he despised guns.”

  “Guess his parents don’t know everything.”

  McAdams shrugged. “They rarely do.”

  AT THE STATION house Decker made about twenty minutes’ worth of calls before he finally hung up the phone. He looked across his partner’s desk at McAdams, who was checking gun records in Greenbury PD. “Anything?”

  “If we received the gun registered to Zeke or Max, it wasn’t recorded here.” He lifted his head. “The more likely explanation is that the boys emptied their lockers when they stopped paying. As far as Zeke Anderson goes, I don’t see any record of a gun license for him. He could have purchased it at a gun show and just never registered it. Things were much laxer back then. Who were you talking to? Baniff?”

  “Yes. Jake Quay brought in a blood-pattern expert two days ago because he was wondering the same thing as me. If the amount of spilled blood was consistent with death.”

  “And?”

  “After applying luminol, the expert did not see any evidence of spray, back spatter, or castoff. Not a likely slash wound, either, because there would be back or forward splatter.”

  “Meaning the victim wasn’t shot, stabbed, slashed, or beaten. What’s left?”

  “Well, probably not shot or beaten or slashed,” Decker said. “Stabbed is still possible. The place was thoroughly cleaned. We could smell the bleach. But usually something telltale is left on the walls or ceilings if the wounds were mortal. She posited that the amount of blood remaining might be consistent with a stab wound—a deep stab wound. A kitchen accident where something sharp sliced into the skin, but didn’t hit an artery. If the wound was deep enough, the blood would drip down and pool under the fridge. SID also found droplets near the sink.”

  McAdams said, “If you get a bad cut, your first instinct would be to wash it off.”

  “Exactly,” Decker said. “It could have been an accident. But the expert also qualified that the injury could have been fatal and the person bled out elsewhere, especially if that person wasn’t given proper medical care. Quay told me that Elsie had a knife block and nothing was missing from that. He did a visual check on all the knives he could find. That was also a negative.”